Bond interest earnings benefit Hampton

Bonds issued by Hampton over the past few years are paying off handsomely.

The township at various times took on additional debt “when interest rates were at their lowest in decades,” according to bond legal counsel Ronald Brown of Dickie, McCamey & Chilcote.

“Within the last year or two, with interest rates rising dramatically, the bond proceeds that will over time be expended on your projects are being invested energetically in interest rates that are leading to significant interest earnings on your unspent bond proceeds,” he said during a Sept. 13 meeting of Hampton council.

Brown is drafting an ordinance to allow the township to spend the earnings — which are totaling about $200,000 a month and probably have reached $2 million, as estimated by municipal manager Christopher Lochner — on capital projects for the long-term benefit of the community.

“Council and the township are in a position to be able to earmark those monies for projects that originally were not able to be covered by a source of funds,” Brown said.

An example is replacing the Clearview Road bridge over Gourdhead Run at Route 8, which has an estimated cost of $1 million.

“Keep in mind that no capital projects in Hampton can be done without the permission of council, even if they’re budgeted projects,” Lochner said. “So you’re actually going to get a chance to vote on it three times: once to convert the interest over for capital project spending; second, for the budget, itself, to identify the project; and then third for the project, itself.”

The ordinance authorizing the spending should be ready in October, he said, for council’s vote on approving its advertisement. Some of the earnings will need to be set aside for arbitrage rebate payments to the U.S. treasury, as required under the Internal Revenue Code.

In other council business on Sept. 13:

• Those in attendance observed a moment of silence in memory of Michael Peters, a former council president who died Sept. 3 at age 71.

“He was a friend to most of the people in this room and a dear friend to several of us,” Carolynn Johnson, the current president, said. “Mike dearly loved this community, and in the four years that he spent in this chair, he poured his heart and his soul into serving this community.”

• Announcements were made for events including Pints in the Park, from 5 to 9 p.m. Sept. 29 at Hampton Community Park, and the Depreciation Lands Museum hosting a Steel City Ghost Hunters event at 7 p.m. Sept. 23 and the museum’s Hydref, a fair commemorating the Welsh heritage of some of Hampton’s early settlers, on Oct. 7.

The Hampton Farmers’ Market continues from 3 to 7 p.m. each Wednesday through Oct. 11 in the community park.